National/Universal Health Care?

In my AP world history class, we've been learning about the western world in post-WW2 era. The book began to go into detail about the implementation of national health care systems in numerous countries in the mid-50s to 70s, including Canada, the U.K, and Japan.

This got me thinking, how do you guys feel about universal health care? Do you think the government should play a role in providing health services for all of our citizens, or at least 95%. What kind of health coverage system is suitable for the U.S: single-payer (Canada, Taiwan and U.K), compulsory (Switzerland, Japan, and Germany), or out-of-pocket (U.S system, sort of)?

I personally prefer a single-payer system with a well-funded public insurance system. One insurance company allows for better monitoring to ensure that they don't raise the prices to make money off of potentially dying patients. Private insurers (in which the U.S heavily depend on) inflate the prices of medical procedures and prescription drugs. Natural childbirth (with or without an epidural) costs $1.6K in the U.S while it's half in Australia. Before the child was born, it already costs a lot giving him/her life. Hospital stays cost as much as $12K per day while it's $730 in the Netherlands.

We need a national health system. We currently have the lowest birth rate of all time, the least we can do is to allow sick people to live longer without the burden of medical bills? We spend the most GDP on health care, and the results are dismal. Even though we have the ACA, it's still not enough.

 

I don't think the government should be in the health care business. The government tends to screw up everything they get their hands on. The health care law is no different.

 

I get covered by the zoo, so yeah...

But I definitely think that our brethren in the wild should be covered, too. You'd be surprised how many injuries there are chasing gazelles. A lot of them have had to get Aflac just to be safe (though I'm not really sure if they realized the duck wasn't included...).

 

I think heath care should be like the police or fire department. Meaning you don't have to concern yourself over some huge fee if you need either service because they are covered by your tax dollars. Same should be true of health care and eventually will be in the future.

 

I think universal health care is a human right.

---------- Post added 1st Apr 2014 at 10:01 PM ----------

I love the new troll! :lol:

 

I believe so, too. And I think it's monstrous for well-off people (in my experience usually richer Americans) to think that it isn't. Healthcare is not something that should be affected by which family you come from. It's a human right, and to deny healthcare to those who can't afford it is as much an act of violence as corrupt legal systems.

 

Depends on where you're at. Rural areas have to pay a monthly/yearly fee to be covered by the fire department.

 

I've never seen anyone able to demonstrate how that is actually true.

 

I think maybe we need to take baby steps.

Increase the number of doctors (AMA and Congress,which sets residency numbers because Medicare funds most residencies and you need residencies for medical students so you create an effective ceiling in the number of doctors by limiting the number of residencies). Also, we might want to reconsider medical education as a whole.

I had a crazy idea once that maybe the government could help partially fund medical trials and get a share of ownership of patents of the drug and then surrender the patent to the public domain and effectively lower the price of new pharmaceuticals. The way this scheme would work is fraught with problems but we need a way to negotiate lower drug costs on a national scale, maybe the same way entire countries do. We have to encourage creativity and innovation without stifling it, but making the fruits accessible to everyone.

We probably also need tort reform on a national scale. Maybe "nationalize" tort damages a la "immunization program's reform" AKA Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

I also think we should democratize medicine by offering subsidies for medical education by paying for doctors' education in exchange for taking certain specialities that are needed like family practice and serving in under served populations/accepting Medicaid.

I'm rambling on my iPhone so sorry if I don't make sense.

 

And funny how every country with universal health care isn't screwing it up. :rolle:

Alright, the French are paying far more than necessary for their healthcare by percentage of GDP. But wait, the Americans are paying far more than the French and your healthcare system still kills people/lets them die.

 

I don't understand how people can live without free healthcare. Oh no, wait, a lot of them actually die...

It's pretty barbarian.

 

I am by no means a huge fan of the Affordable Care Act, and it certainly has its flaws.

But the law was originally a plan created by conservatives, and private insurance companies are a central component to the ACA.

 

Access to affordable healthcare should be a universal human right. You should be able to stay on your family's plan until you are 26, and should not be denied for preexisting conditions. I believe the ACA will be a roaring success since we got the 7 million minimum that we needed, with more ready to sign up. However, I'd like to also make a transition into the single payer system, like ALL universal powers have. I think we need to model our healthcare system the way Europe has theirs set up.

 

A bit too broad; there are so many differences in EU healthcare (let alone including non-EU countries like Norway and Switzerland). Germany has a more efficient system than France in some ways, and Britain is arguably the best in the world for healthcare.

Of course, the ACA is still very corporatist and has similar flaws to Australia's healthcare (which is still far more comprehensive and less dangerous than the ACA).

And there's still the problem of corporations and medical supplies; the fact that a company may refuse to save lives because potential patients can't afford it is really disgusting, like that US company that didn't want to release cancer-preventing drugs to India because "it was not designed for Indians who can't afford it." Corporate medicine needs to be abolished.

 

During the health care debate, Bill O'Reilly interviewed Bill Clinton and Clinton asked O'Reilly what his idea for reform was. O'Reilly's answer was,

"Just turn it over to the free market and the problem will solve itself."

The free market is not the solution to the problem, the free market is the problem. Hospitals have been allowed to mark up their services in the thousands of percent of what the actual cost was to deliver the care. The insurance companies have been willing to cover these outrageous prices, which in turn resulted in skyrocketing premiums.

My plan for health care is this: We pass a law that says no hospital or care provider can charge more than 150% of the actual cost of care. Then we create a single-payer system that will cover essential health services, including physicals, vaccinations, hospital stays, emergency care, etc that is all paid for through your taxes. I like what Canada does, where new immigrants are not allowed to use government-funded health services for a period of time set by each province. For the time being, they have to buy private insurance.

You could have private insurance if you wanted, but the tax to fund health care is still coming out of your paycheck whether you use the service or not, so you may as well just use it. Now that's going to trigger screams of, "BUT I DON'T WANT MY TAX DOLLARS GOING TO SOMEONE ELSE'S HEALTH CARE!!!!" Simple answer is, "I don't care." The United States spends more tax dollars on health care than any other country in the world, and we don't even have universal health care here. That and if it's such a tragedy that a few dollars that were taken from your check went to save someone's life, you have a real moral problem that needs to get addressed. Good news! Counseling is covered 100% under this new system!

Aside from my boyfriend being from Canada, I have a friend who's from Portugal, which has universal health care, and he says that people live much longer there because everything is covered 100%-no co-pay or out-of-pocket costs. This means more people go to the doctor more often when they have a problem, and diseases/major health issues are caught earlier and treated before they cause irreversible damage.

 

Yeah. With that knowledge, that's like saying "It's hot? We'll just put you in an ice bath and it'll solve your problem itself."

---------- Post added 1st Apr 2014 at 08:34 PM ----------

Oh wow, that's what Japan does. If you're in Japan on a student or a working visa for over a year, you need to enroll in their healthcare system. Immigrants are completely banned from receiving the benefits of national healthcare in most other countries.

 

Roche, a pharmecutical company with a total monopoly on important AIDS drugs, was limited to charging 18,000 per patient in South Korea. This was a profit, but Roche was so pissed off that they refused to send any drugs to South Korea to send a message to others who would limit their prices. During this incident, an executive of Roche publicly stated that saving lives is not their purpose, moneymaking is. That's not a paraphrase. He actually said that.

Roche is Swiss. I agree with you as to the US system being 18 different kinds of fucked up and definately the worst in the developed world, I just wanted to share the most fucked up story I've heard on the subject.

 

The private market IS the problem. Bloated companies who can charge whatever they want for something that should be FREE and guaranteed to all. I currently am basically on universal healthcare right now through the Veterans Admin and it is amazing. I have found no lacking in healthcare and services.

Let me tell you a quick story of my experiences and you tell me this shouldn't be in place

3 years ago I was placed in the 8 category which means I have zero copays for ANY service or medication

One day I went to the bathroom and was in extreme pain. Yup...kidney stone time

It tried to pass but refused. I was in more pain than I have ever been before. I went to the ER and was seen, given medications and when the stone ultimate refused to pass and my kidney began to swell I was operated on to remove the stone

I went home and convalesced and relaxed and healed

The best part...I didn't go home and think about the several thousand dollar bill and deductible I would owe.

THAT is an amazing feeling and I wish every person in the world could experience this

 

There are some key things that universal health care does that private plans do not:

1) Diseases tend to be caught early because there is no back-of-the-mind concern about the cost of screening and early treatment (when it is most effective)

2) Administration costs are dramatically lower in public healthcare systems (far less paperwork, I go to a clinic, I show them my health insurance card and that's it)

From Wikipedia: Comparison of the health care systems in Canada and the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

3) We are relatively well-protected against catastrophic illnesses that would otherwise bankrupt us.

4) It is easier to get overall health statistics from a central plan, this facilitates resource allocation, epidemiology studies, etc.

Yes, there are problems, an aging population is making healthcare a greater burden on the younger generations still in the workforce, public medication insurance (the public payers) is forcing difficult decisions for expensive meds and procedures. There often isn't enough money to hire more doctors.

But overall, most of the work in healthcare goes to caring for patients rather than completing endless forms (and I still believe the burden of paperwork is excessive even in our public systems).

Government in Canada covers about 70% of healthcare costs so we do have private spending on healthcare, however...

From the same Wikipedia source quoted above:

Whether public or private, whether in the US or Canada, both countries will spend roughly the same on healthcare (but the US spends much more on administration), here it's by taxes, in the US, under the illusion of "choice" you pay privately, while 35-40 million people go uninsured, or, like that poor bastard in Michael Moore's movie Sicko; the guy had to choose which of two lost fingers to keep because his insurance was willing to pay for only one to sew back on...